Nuances of Narcissism

From an American novelist,  keen observer of the social scene:

He had seen enough of music and the stage  to know that, as a matter of course, the people connected with them  reached heights of conceit and pretentiousness,  that painters and writers, for instance, hardly dared dream of.

-- James Gould Cozzens,  Ask Me Tomorrow (1940)

People outside the arts will be surprised.  Tiens -- Are musicians actually more self-involved than are painters?  One had not known.

But such occupational psychological fault-lines  exist indeed.   As:  To anyone on the “Marketing” side of the Dilbert Divide,  or in the arts scene,  tech guys are simply a vague gray mass of computer-nerds, whether they be in software or hardware.   Yet my own observations  working in the R&D half of Franklin Computer  revealed such a subtle scission.   While as a group overall, engineers are generally more relaxing and enjoyable to work with  than are academics,  hardware engineers are notably straightforward and devoid of drama-queenery;  while software engineers, though sometimes more interesting intellectually and with a better sense of humor, include a certain number of cranks and unclubbables  within their ranks.

My present place of employment has a huge range of specialties -- soldiers and civilians, mathematicians and cyberneticians, pen-pushers and policy-wonks.  Most are splendid, a few do bad things.  But when it comes specifically to preening and whining -- alas! -- thát you find among my own tribe -- the linguists.

There are likewise a spectrum of stereotypical personality patterns among chemists versus physicists -- nay, experimental physicists versus theoreticians -- and many others.   When shrewdly observed, these lead to the best of all genres of jokes based on disciplines.   As,

“A soldier, a sailor, an airman and a marine  walk into a pet-store…”

or

“An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematican …”

“A zoologist, a mathematician, and a positivist  …”

(for some reason, both of those crucially involve cows).

[Update:  Scientists and Cows ]  This just in!  -- Well, just-in to my ken;  the joke actually dates back to the Sputnik days, back in the ‘fifties.  First, those pesky Ruskies put up a satellite.  And then:

The next satellite had a dog.  And there was a joke:  the next one’s going to be a cow, and then they’re going to put up several cows, and the joke was, it’ll be the first herd shot round the world.

[Photo credit:  NASA]

[Quoted from Ann Finkelbeiner, The Jasons, 2006.]

~

There have been some memorable journalistic portraits of the relatively healthy and bracing atmosphere in engineering start-ups (e.g. Soul of a New Machine).   A more recent, low-key but rewarding study is by Tom Wolfe, “Two Young Men Who Went West”, printed (reprinted?) in Hooking Up (2000).

For a still more recent account of what happens when an engineering firm is handed over to a narcissist, try this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/fiorinas-record-at-hp-defines-her-candidacy--which-could-be-a-problem/2015/09/26/5a5b5e16-6174-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story.html

[Appendix]   Hey cows turn out to look really cool in outer space, here's another one:

Cow in its natural element

~

Back to the correlation to narcissism, of various scientific disciplines.  

It is beyond contest, that (say) chemists and civil engineers have a reputation for very low doses of Drama, compared with (say) physicists.   But what are the traits that gave physicists such a rep?

It is seldom really narcissism, for that is a matter of individual, personal psychology.  If there is self-regard, that among physicists is more that of the guild -- a corporative trait, which might strike outsiders as arrogant. 

Ann Finkelbeiner, in her fine history of the elite advisory group known as the Jasons (who were overwhelmingly physicists), gives an anecdote from an oceanographer (p. 138), recalling an uncharacteristic foray into oceanography by the Jasons:

I did resent this “the ocean is a wonderful summer playground for smart physicists who can do it in their spare time”.  You may know this thing called physics arrogance.  It’s real.

Indeed, Finkelbeiner reveals (p. xvii) that at one point “I wanted to call this book The Arrogance of Physicists.”

Now, arrogance can co-exist with narcissism, and flavor it;   but they by no means need be co-present.  Thus, the eponym, Narcissus himself, was not arrogant in the least:  he was dreamily, solipsistically folded-in on himself.

Consider the humble confession of quantum wizard Wolfgang Pauli in 1925:

At the moment, physics is again terribly confused.  In any case, it is difficult for me, and I wish I had been a movie comedian or something of the sort, and had never heard of physics.

Yet many anecdotes are told about Pauli’s arrogance -- within physics : e.g. “What Professor Einstein says” (he concedes) “is not so stupid”.  Or the damning phrase “Not even wrong” (recently the title of a book attacking the very integrity of String Theory).   Or consider this joke (quoted by Ann Finkelbein in The Jasons, 2006):

A physicist gets to heaven  and God asks him if there’s anything he’d like to know, and the physicist says, “Yes, please.  Why is the Fine Structure Constant 1/137?”  God gives him the explanation, and the physicist says, “No, that’s wrong.”

Ironic note:   Any such explanation from God  would in fact have been wrong -- since (as we now know) the value of the Fine Structure Constant, though close to 1/137, is not exactly that, and thus is not a ratio of (small) integers at all:  it’s just one of those boring physical parameters that drone on and on, and could (for all we know) just as well have been somewhat different.  The conjecture that it might actually be a pure integer ratio  caused a certain amount of numerological excitement back in the day, but that turned out to be a false alarm.

~

We have frequently written about the related but distinct notions of depth  versus difficulty (in math and science).   This comparison/contrast of narcissism versus arrogance (the former being key to our American culture, the latter to our politics) may likewise prove fruitful.

Life, Art, nabbed in Parisian love-nest !

In the following post,

     My apologies to M. le Président

itself repeatedly updated, as though with post-it notes, with each fresh whiff of scandal out of France, we apologized to the French President  for having called him “a crowd-courting doofus;  a lackwit wazzock”, and other things still more unkind.   Here, now, is the latest:

Anthony Lane, reviewing the new Tavernier film “Quai d'Orsay” (the title which Wiki gives it in English as well, though apparently it has recently been dumbed down for American audiences as “The French Minister”, rather the way the first Harry Potter book, “The Philosopher’s Stone”, had to become “The Sorcerer’s Stone” to cross the Atlantic), highlights the femme fatale character:

She is played by Julie Gayet, who was in the news recently as the woman to whom the real French President, François Hollande, was paying regular visits  on his little scooter.  And her character is called Valérie, which is the name of the partner whom Hollande was allegedly spurning for Mme. Gayet.  This is not life imitating art.  This is art going to bed with life  and staying there for the afternoon.

-- The New Yorker, 31 March 2014

A nice touch, that, by the way -- “his little scooter”.  This is artful of Mr Lane, suggesting that what the dumpling Hollande has   down there  between his legs  is pretty small, and goes putt-putt.

*

Si cela vous parle,

savourez la série noire

en argot authentique d’Amérique :

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justiceexcerptdivorce.html

*

For further instances in which French sex and French politics  intertwine like the rose and the briar, try these:

           

            L’affaire  Masson  / Grosdidier

            The Muff of Mystery

            The World Cup of Crime

~

An after-reflection upon Mr. Lane,   the Art of Criticism, 

and the Meaning of Life

Well, no, precisely not, though that is just the temptation:  It’s just a mo-vie.   I enjoy Lane’s reviews the way I enjoy P.G. Wodehouse  -- reliably;  and sometimes there is rather more than that.   Yet in Googling his name, there in the very top returns were some absolutely scathing, venomous denunciations.  Bringing it home that, not only can you not count on pleasing all of the people all of the time (I think Abraham Lincoln said that):  if you so much as delight some people  some of the time, there will be others who downright  despise you.

One of these counter-critics, writing in some New-York-based webzine, poured scorn upon Lane as a mere spewer of witticisms, with almost no knowledge of cinema;  and in particular (in reference to the movie under review, one of those vaporous martial-arts-cum-mysticism films) for having insufficiently spent his life delving into the splendors and subtleties of kung fu movies, or whatever it was.   His final, crushing verdict:  Anthony Lane’s reviews are so bad that they read like something out of a webzine.  (Oh, wait …)

Now, inside this animadversion lie perdu  two traits for which I specially value Mr Lane.   One, that he is no prisoner of the self-referential Cahiers-du-Cinéma-style film-crit hall of mirrors, but has windows on the world:  the review referenced above is informed with a sense of biography and of current politics.   Further, Mr. Lane knows his audience.   Probably few regular readers of The New Yorker (and I have been following that venerable weekly, though in part  pre-natally, since its inception in 1925) could by any possibility care less about puffed-up Oriental kick-‘em flix, however balletic the cinematography.  Mr Lane is not writing for the sort of pimpled basement-dwelling masturbators who batten on kung fu flix.   He reviews them, along with all the rest, simply because he is paid to do so, that is his job, whatever washes up on his plate that week.

As for the charge of wittiness, no doubt Mr Lane would own the soft impeachment.  He indeed is consistently witty, but also at least intermittently keenly perceptive, and occasionally (as here) capable of genuine moral seriousness.

[Note:  I had long suspected, based simply upon the archness of his writing (& yes yes, well aware, pot/kettle/black), that he might share with his countryman Oscar Wilde  more than the charm and English drollery (something that his ‘jacket photo’ on the New Yorker site  does nothing to dispel).  But no, turns out the man is a paterfamilias.  Some years ago,  I experienced an exactly parallel realization  regarding the arch and icecream-suited Tom Wolfe.]

[Afternote:   As for the Meaning-of-Life stuff, sorry, that lies above your service-level.  For that, you’ll have to upgrade to World of Dr Justice Prime ®.]

[Update 27 III 14]  The blushing vestal to get big buck$  in compensation:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-eco/2014/03/27/97002-20140327FILWWW00183--closer-devra-payer-15000-euros-a-julie-gayet.php#xtor=EPR-31-[-closer-devra-payer-15000-euros-a-julie-gayet]-20140327-[titre]

Bonfire of the Vanities

There has been no end of commentary, from both sides of the Atlantic, on the DSK affair.  Yet a couple of points seem not to have been made, and so shall be made here.

(1)   Not disputed is the scenario at T = 0:   DSK exits the shower, and finds Diallo in his room.  At this point, narratives differ, and continue to diverge over the subsequent events of the day.   But the oddity of the initial situation somehow passes without comment from either side.

To see how odd it is:  Imagine that Hillary Clinton, say, checked into a luxury hotel in Paris.   She is granted the luxury and privacy of the V.I.P. suite.  Yet upon stepping naked from the shower, she is confronted with a man (let’s call him Carlos) who, despite the obvious fact that she has not checked out, claims he is there to “clean the room”.

It is evident straight off that all public opinion would be against the man -- your first thought is that he has snuck in to steal something, or worse --  and (on the distaff side) would no doubt would work itself up to a righteous froth in the process.  But with the genders reversed… sound of crickets.  
Yet one thing is plain.  Either

    (a)  Diallo had no business being in that place at that time, and may have been up to something; or

    (b) She was there by prior arrangement with her … client…
(French reactions to this latter scenario here.)

To continue the thought-experiment:   

Imagine further that Carlos --- without corroborating witness -- goes on to accuse Ms. Clinton of some atrocity.  The Secretary, having checked out, is on a plane for her next appointment.  It is already on the tarmac, when French forces storm the plane, remove her by force, then parade her in handcuffs before a sneering, jeering populace.  She is thrown into prison with the lowest scum; unflattering photographs of her in unkempt captivity  are illegally leaked to the media.  The French press publishes front-page cartoons depicting her as various unpleasant animals, and in huge headlines, labels her  “la perv”.   An ambitious D.A. claims an open-and-shut case.  She is denied bail.  Invective pours upon her from around the world, and spreads to slurs on Americans generally, and on women generally.  When she is finally released on bail (at a figure higher than what is charged for most accused murderers), she attempts to find refuge at her husband's pied-a-terre in Paris, but the neighbors (with what legal authority is unclear)  block the move, not wishing to live near such a leper.  She is forced to hire emergency lodgings at her own considerable expense, and (lest she slip out by night to wreak further outrages) to wear an ankle bracelet at all times, as well as to hire -- again at her own considerable expense -- armed guards to watch her every move, with orders to shoot if she tries to pull something funny.  (It is unclear whether the bullets thus expended would be additionally charged to her account.)
It develops that Carlos has extensive ties in the Corsican underworld -- only, we have not been told so much as his name, which is shielded out of tender concern for what the Secretary of State might have done to him. Meanwhile these facts are hushed up, while the blood-lust mounts, and Clinton resigns from her office in disgrace, her Presidential ambitions in tatters.  Before her guilt or innocence can be determined, she is replaced by a politician of the opposite gender, who soon winds up facing criminal charges in turn.
Even when the lies begin to unravel, and she is finally released, a horde of paparazzi follow her wherever she goes, and file snide reports on what she's wearing, and how much she pays for lunch.

By this point, a number of Americans would be calling for the bombing of France.  (Well, actually, for Clinton, no, but if it had happened to Palin, then definitely.)   And this, in effect, is exactly what New York City, and its gutter press, did to the head of perhaps the most important financial body in the world, and the man who might well otherwise have become the next President of France.

(2)   Disputes abound, both factual and deontological, but on one thing all sides seem piously to agree.  “Only two people know what happened in that room.  The rest of us, we’ll probably never know.”

Now, that is certainly a logical possibility, perhaps even a probability:  but a truism it is not.  Some others who might be au courant include:  the concierge, or winking desk-clerk, who for a fee will arrange such things;  her handler, who will certainly be wanting his cut from so ripe a plum.

(3)  The whole affair is eerily reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s classic novel, Bonfire of the Vanities,  where again, a man of finance and some heft, is brought low by an ill wind from the Bronx….

Footnote:

Having recklessly slimed DSK, the New York Post (a Murdoch rag) is now raking over Diallo with equal glee:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/hotel_maid_got_stiffed_by_dom_4sML8y67I7vcfXEBbTo2UM

(The pun, of course, is intentional.)

Still and all, give the devil his due.  If these latest allegations prove true (a big if; I wouldn’t take on faith  the word of Murdoch’s minions, nor a leak from the Defense), it will be quite a scoop for the Post, throwing the entire affair in a new and lucid light, one which had never occurred to me during the weeks when I pondered the ins and outs of this case.   It does sometimes happen that a tawdry source is the first to reveal a bombshell that is later largely substantiated (the National Enquirer, the Drudge Report).

[Update 10 VII 2011]
A number of parallel cases are examined here -- this time not as thought-experiment, but as fact:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-arent-we-mad-at-the-mistresses/2011/07/08/gIQA9DwQ4H_story.html

[Update 27 VIII 2011]
Eventually, as it must, DSK-fatigue sets in:

Un sparadrap nommé DSK

À l'instar du capitaine Haddock, les dirigeants socialistes aimeraient se débarrasser de l'ancien patron du FMI, dont le retour risque de perturber leur campagne 

DSK ministre en 2012 ? Une majorité de Français est contre

Blanchi, mais pas ministrable pour autant.

[Update 29 VIII 2011]
Further fun is to be had here.

[Update 18 IX 11]
DSK interview here.

~     ~     ~

Actually, a propos of pretty much nothing -- there is a wonderful scene of scene of Woman-walking-in-on-man-exiting-naked-from-the-shower in Episode 5 of Season 5 of “Angel”.   Angel has had a tiring day, and has just washed off some demon blood, when in waltzes Eve.  She shows no remorse at thus walking in on him (nor does he bother with a towel), but excuses herself thus:

            The door was open.  Well, unlocked.

Angel knows otherwise.  She counters:

            Well, I had a key.

He recovers what she had purloined.   She idles on:

            You take a long shower for a guy.  Were we having some gentleman’s time?

-- Ah!  It’s a great show.  And French politics is un show for sure.  And the Big Apple is a show of its own.   It’s all good, in its own way, even when it’s outrageous.